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Thursday, September 21, 2017

Creepy Crawlies - Spidicules and Kingdom Death Campaign years 5.1-10

The Spidicules was one of my favorite minis from the first Kingdom Death KS. I've griped plenty about how impractical it turned out to be, which is why it's not still a favorite, but think it's a cool model, and think its little spiderlings are just charming, in an ugly sort of way. I'm particularly happy with how all their eyes came out.

I also played around with Spidicules pinup, taking it as a way to do my version of the Silk Body Suit, of course also with the modified shield. I repeated this sort of hatching look on the above victim / puppet / angler fish thing.

Year 5.1
We got home, found yet another person waiting for us there (this one was a new Survivor), completed the Gorm armor, and got a second Greater Gaxe.

Also, we innovated Paint. This felt like a serious turning point for our settlement, since we just picked up a lot more flexibility, doubled our strong weapons, and got 7 more points of armor.

We then went out to hunt a Gorm, which dragged out really hard at the end, due to some bad hit locations, our two dagger fighters never being able to roll above a 5 to wound, and our axe guy never being able to roll above a 3 to hit. Another enjoyably close fight, despite stupid luck.

Year 6
The Slenderman spooked the settlement in its prologue event, then we lost 4 survivors to a Silk Storm, and two more to the Twilight Knight. We used endeavors to get some of our population back.

We knew the Bone Witch was coming to town, and decided that, having completed the Gorm armor, now was a perfect time to face a Spidicules (and get it back for our dead survivors this year), and gamed it so the Bone Witch wouldn't come back and one of the Spidicules' events that doesn't make any sense to me was at least advantageous. We also dug a newb out of the Spider's nest, for a net loss of only two survivors. I think this is the fastest we've ever lost Survivors: 16 (3 intentional, 5 from actual fights) in 7 years is pretty brutal. We keep trying to repopulate, but haven't hit that magic 15 yet. Didn't help that we started with a low population.

Year 7
Yep, gamed the Bone Witch (that's 7 individuals or groups visiting our little town in 5 years), so she went away. Also, the Phoenix flew overhead, though it's something we'll probably ignore, as per our intended campaign.

We did get a pretty good haul from the Spidicules: enough to make a Silk Mill, innovate a Settlement Watch, and save 2 resources that are both good for making Spidicules weapons.

We then went through an absolute slog of a Spidicules fight: we were having trouble killing a (as in, singular) Spiderling a turn, and knew the trap was on top at one point, so managing things became a terrible chore. Mostly, we just couldn't roll above a 4 most of our turns. We managed to do everything we were trying to, including getting our two difficult weapon specializations, and harvesting everything on the field that could be, but it was just one painfully slow fight. Oh, also, it didn't help that one of our two strongest guys lost 1 speed due to the hunt.

Year 8
We finally hit 15 people and chose to Accept the Darkness, as we usually do (our settlement's not rolling and does have plenty of Endeavors, so we didn't want to take the penalty for the Endeavor output).

We then decided to fight some Gorms again, because the Spider fights continued to not feel worth it, and we had all the special resources we really wanted for everything but the armor (which isn't amazing for the effort), so we wanted to farm for generic stuff (which the Gorm excels at, given how flexible many of its resources are).

Year 9
We were confronted with an option that amounted to fighting the Slenderman before the settlement phase and get a hunt this year or, with enough loot that at very least we'd be getting one nice weapon, fight after making stuff.

We decided to take a gamble, and go with the former.

We continued our terrible rolling (including a few spectacular whiffs on the monster's part), but slugged it out to the bloody end. We lost our best damage dealer at maybe the 3/4 mark in the fight, and got lucky with a final wound on the death blow. In the process, we managed to get 6 of its unique resource, setting us up to get some awesome gear if we could save it up for a few years. Honestly, I think that's been the best nemesis fight since the Tyrant. I think I just like movement shenanigan bosses. (Uhh, minor spoilers, I guess.)

Year 9.1
We continued with our regular hunt this year, making some leather and weapons, then fighting a Gorm for a pretty easy kill.

Year 10
Yet again, our settlement was harassed, this time by a tougher Manhunter. We lost with 2 wounds remaining on him: we made one poor decision that probably could have won us the game... didn't help that the one remaining card had Headhunter... and that 3 of the 4 severe injuries we rolled during the fight killed the survivor and the other gave an injury that made that one useless*. But, before he died, we stole his hat! (Small victories...) Unfortunately, we also lost our Green savior, who'd helped tank a lot of that fight, and our Irreplaceable sword, that we used rather poorly.

Thus continued our trend of pretty bad luck and not having quite the damage output we wanted.

With a ton of endeavors, we made some more kids I think?

*Okay, does anyone else feel like 9/10 times they roll knock down or death with nothing in between? Other than the above back injury, I feel like I can't remember the last permanent injury the group's needed to deal with. Broken and dismembered limbs are practically a myth for my group.